The JM & H Show

Sunday, August 05, 2018

Other than a handful of trips to Atlanta, this has been a Midwest spring and summer for us: we've been ping-ponging between Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota since April. Before then, we'd never been to Wisconsin at all, and we'd only driven through a corner of Minnesota. We'd logged a good number of miles driving to and from the home office in Illinois, but usually without any extra time for exploring. So, we've seen lots of new places these last few months, like... St Charles, IL.

This was such a fun city to visit! Our job here spanned a weekend, so we were able to roam around without feeling rushed, although there's lots that we missed and neither of us will be upset if we're ever called back.

Stop 1: Primrose Farm

We began by spending some time with the ladies in the Jersey barn and then witnessed a rumble between two Columbian Wyandottes outside the hen house. We also said good morning to a herd of Shropshire sheep, two Nigerian dwarf goats and a pair on miniature donkeys, none of which were very interested in posing for pictures :)

Stop 2: Oberweis Ice Cream & Dairy Store

Ice cream for breakfast! That is lemon blackberry and coffee in a waffle cone for me, and a lemon blackberry shake for Jan Michael. We had the whole shop to ourselves, based entirely, I'm sure, on the assumption that the rest of the county was making much wiser food choices :) But! We would do it again in a heartbeat!

Stop 3: Mt. St. Mary Park

Here we burned off approximately 1/1000th of our breakfast calories by taking a lovely walk in the rain. The park is full of sculptures, some temporary and some permanent; Mr. Eggwards was our favorite of them all :)

Monday, July 30, 2018

One of my New Year's resolutions was to be a faithful recorder of all we're doing out here on the road.

I have failed!

I'd like to try again.

Also, I need some kind of creative outlet that's cheap and takes up very little room, and this fits the bill. So...

Our job situation has changed slightly in that rather than having a dedicated testing trailer and route of our own, we're now a relief team. This means that we hop around to different trailers, taking over for other tech teams who are on vacation or otherwise absent from work. Theoretically, this also means that we work less and have more free time, which necessitates a home base of sorts. While we would love this to be WA, it's simply not feasible for a variety of reasons. And so, for a variety of other reasons, we find ourselves landing in Atlanta when we have a decent chunk of time off. When we moved to Texas four years ago, I was certain it was the end of the earth and we couldn't possibly live anywhere farther from WA. Ha, ha and ha.

Poor Atlanta, we had preconceived notions of it that were not favorable. We've done that several times, assuming that a city is an armpit and then being pleasantly surprised. There's a wealth of really fun, interesting things to see and do in Atlanta (of which we've only scratched the surface), and there are neighborhoods full of old houses and gigantic trees that charmed us right off the bat. (The traffic situation, however, does fall squarely into the armpit category.)

One of the first things we did was buy an annual membership to the botanical garden; we've visited twice now, once in the spring and once in the summer, and it's been beautiful both times.

And about those delightful neighborhoods I mentioned above:

I hesitate to run around snapping pictures of other people's houses as that would make me uncomfortable as a homeowner, but I some things are tough to resist. I tried to be very discreet about it, though :) I can't wait for walks here in the fall!

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

We tend to share only the sight-seeing part of life on the road, which may give the impression that we spend all of our time sitting in old-fashioned soda fountains and wandering around presidential libraries, but no. We do actual work an awful lot, too.

Last fall, after our very long stint in Memphis at FedEx, we were sent to Arkansas. One of the places we tested at was a cement factory.

This was a particularly pleasant job in that we had a huge break the first afternoon, and we used our free time to sit on the banks of this pond in our camping chairs, playing Phase 10 while the sun set. A handful of alligators live here; it would have made my whole week to see them, but the guys at the plant thought they were probably hunkered down in the mud because of the cold.

We were also given a tour of the plant once the job was finished. This isn't something that's available very often, and we always take the opportunity when we can. Everything is made somehow, and it's fascinating to watch the process, especially with things we don't really think about (ready-mixed concrete, for example).

Friday, February 09, 2018

January gave us such a nice introduction to the new year. The transition from vacation back to life on the road can throw me for a loop sometimes, but there were so many pleasant things throughout the whole month, and our re-entry felt very easy.

We had jobs in both San Antonio and Austin, two places we always wanted to visit when we actually lived in Texas. Besides exploring, we were able to get together with an old friend of Jan Michael's (who brought us pineapple turnovers!) as well as friends from high school (who cooked us dinner and let us love on their pit bull Daisy!). We are fans of real life, face-to-face connections, homemade dessert, and snuggling sweet dogs - all things we're rarely able to do out here - so both evenings were wonderful treats.

We also spent two weekends in hotels with Targets nearby, and I took full advantage of the proximity. The way I prefer to spend an early Saturday morning is this: rising before the sun, drinking a bunch of coffee, and then going to Target (or Hobby Lobby or Old Navy etc etc) right when it opens and meandering around without having to fight crowds or worrying about where in the world I will park our behemoth of a truck. The Targets I visited each had fully stocked Dollar Spots and I found darling bits and bobs to mail out for Valentine's Day. I also found a fantastic Def Leppard t-shirt and an equally fantastic Montana sweatshirt, neither of which were the correct size, so too bad for me. I will look again at the next Target we come across 😊

What else? We found a few local holes-in-the-wall in several of the towns we stayed in, with really good food (spinach enchiladas! fried pickles! vanilla malts!). And we spent a good bit of time outside on the weekends, which always makes us happy.

Jan Michael knew some of the story behind the Alamo and the battle that was fought there, while I knew nothing, and our visit was very interesting. I feel like we gained some insight as to why Texans are so enthusiastic about Texas 😊 Admission is also free, which was astonishing, especially considering the $120 we paid across the street for entry into Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium and the Guinness World Record Museum. (What a colossal waste of money; I'm the one who made that decision and I had buyer's remorse two seconds after I handed over the credit card.)

At the River Walk, so much of the flora and fauna was dead, but there wasn't a horde of people to fight through, either - the pros and cons of visiting in the winter.

The capitol building in Austin is gigantic and stately, and that spindly spiral staircase at the top of the cupola makes me nervous. The figure on top of the dome is the Goddess of Liberty; the original was installed in 1888 and then replaced by a replica in 1986. Evidently lots of men have boasted about their lady loves being the model for the original, although no women have ever made such a claim, at least on the historical record 😊

We also spent part of a Saturday morning at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. There are 15 presidential libraries across the country; they are fascinating and we'd like to visit as many as we can. Besides such a huge amount of information about LBJ and his administration, we were able to see an exhibit called Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection. It was one of my favorite parts of the whole library and I'll add a link so you can read about it yourself.

As for the outdoors, Barton Springs Pool is filled with water from a nearby spring. It's deep (18 feet at its maximum) and fairly warm (between 68 and 74 degrees), and is used no matter the season - as evidenced by the guy swimming laps at the beginning of January (while we walked around in our winter coats, ha!). It was fun to see Austin's skyline in the distance; I bet the city lights on hot summer nights look really neat.

Tuesday, July 04, 2017

The last time I gave our little space here any attention, it was February and I mentioned time flying so quickly that the 4th of July would be upon us before we knew it, and now... it's the 4th of July. Yikes.

Without making any official reference to Thanksgiving being around the bend - because I know what's bound to happen if I do :) - I'll share some highlights from the spring, when we bounced back and forth between Indiana and Michigan.

The Meyer May House by Frank Lloyd Wright - Grand Rapids, MI:

As we've traveled around, we've been on the lookout for Frank Lloyd Wright houses; we've both been fans of his work since college. There's a lot out there, most of which are private residences, but a few are open for public tours, and the Meyer May House is our favorite so far. Look at those windows and the light coming through them! :)

Purdue University - Lafayette, IN:

I remember very clearly that the day we visited Purdue was the first day it really felt and looked like spring. It was lovely and wonderful evidence that winter is not forever :)

The Canal Walk - Indianapolis, IN:

Along with Chattanooga, Indianapolis is at the top of our list of big(ger) cities that don't feel like big cities and have tons of fun things to do. If we ever find ourselves living there, it will be right on the canal :)

Friday, February 10, 2017

Before Valentine's Day has come and gone (or, based on the speed at which time is flying, the 4th of July), just a few of my favorite pictures from December and January...

Metropolis in southern Illinois has a bit of a theme ;)

Graceland is something else all the way around, but the pool room is particularly...loud. No qualms regarding color and texture for Mr. Elvis Presley :)

We were in an area of Tennessee towards the end of January that was surrounded by waterfalls. Yay, hooray, and yippee for hiking around in the rain and the green; it was like a little shot of WA on the other side of the country.

Jan Michael made a friend at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga :)

And then, the grand finale of the month (of our entire life on the road so far, actually) was the morning we spent at Rock City in Lookout Mountain, GA. These pictures are a very inadequate representation of what we saw and felt while we were there; if fairies and elves and mermaids and gnomes live anywhere, it's here :)

Saturday, December 03, 2016

Sometime in the middle of November, the weather took a turn for the better - because 80-some degrees anytime after the end of September is inappropriate - and everything started to look and feel like fall in our little corner of the southern states. Tennessee is a beautiful place to freeze your fingers and toes while you watch the leaves change and flutter to the ground; I'm glad we're here to experience it :)